Wilberforce
Legacy Name: Wilberforce

Ahoy Matie! I be called Wilberforce, but ye be callin' me "Dead-Eye Willie" 'cause I got this pirate patch over my eye, and 'cause I'm a dead aim with my slingshot and my bow and arrow. I'm gettin' ready to run away soon and sign up to be a pirate, 'cause there's lots of pirate ships here at Port Plunder and I know I can get a job on one of them, and I won't get so many wallopins when I'm a pirate, unless my mom signs on too. Course I could always jump ship if she does. But I'm not going in for one of those deck-swabbin' jobs, no sir! I'm goin' to be a First Gunner's-Mate, 'cause I've been practicing. Aarr!.


See, me'n Piquels found a cask of gunpowder in Auntie Freddie's warehouse and we're wondering what to do with it. So, we tried to make fireworks out of it, but we just ended up making a deep hole in the ground, which was sorta of fun, but it was pretty low for a firework. Did you know that when gunpowder goes 'woosh!' you loose eyebrows sometimes.





Then Piquels remembered that the Governor of Omen Island has this canon on his lawn that he uses to start boat races, and scare the sea-gulls that make a mess on his statue, so we borrowed if and took it down to the wharf behind the warehouse. We didn't know how much powder to add, so Piquels says 'one quart,' but I put in an extra one for good luck and I think she put in one more too. We didn't have a canon ball, but we used newspapers for wadding, and we broke mom's new broom handle ramming them into the muzzle and it got stuck. We fired the canon when Auntie Freddie and her friends left port on the Krakatoa and after that we couldn't sit down because of the wallopin' but it was OK because we couldn't hear ourselves crying either. I heard that the Captain of the 'Delusional' gave up drinking after a 'flaming sword from hell' shot up through the deck and stuck at his feet right after he heard this really big clap of thunder. Ha ha! It was our broomstick! When our hearing returned and we could sit down again, we planned our next shot for the following week.





We actually didn't get to fire the canon the second time, 'cause Auntie Merry saw what we were about to do with my red wagon strapped to it. I wanted the canon to take me for a ride, but Auntie Merry was very mad at us and she tried to teach us a lesson about balliststicks and she rammed that cannon down onto a pipe stickin' out of the ground. She made a 'crash-test-dummy' out of old sacks and dressed it in some of my old pants and duck taped it to my wagon so that she could show us a fissicks lesson too. She named the dummy 'Wilbur' and used a sharpie marker to draw a face on it that looked kinda like me, she let me draw my pirate eye patch on Wilbur. When she lit the canon off, the canon, the wagon and most of the crash-test-dummy flew through the air about a quarter of a mile away into the bay. At first I thought it was really cool, but then I looked down at the smoldering head of Wilbur at Merry's feet and I cried cause half of his face was missing. Merry had to hire a diving team to go get the canon back for the Governor and I got to go see a 'shrink,' but I didn't get a wallopin' and neither did Auntie Merry. You know, I think Auntie Merry could take mom in a celebrity walllopin-match, but I wouldn't want to watch it.



This last time was s'posed to be the best shot. We 'cided not to steal...you know, borrow the canon, but to just sneak up on the Governor's lawn and shoot it from there. We found a nice round rock that was about the right size for a canon ball and we were going to see how far we could shoot it into the bay. We only added 2 quarts of gunpowder and we were careful not to break mom's new broom handle again. But just as we lit the fuse, Piquels tripped on the rope and the canon turned just as it went off...



Well, for the last week Merry's divers have been looking for the head of the Governor's statue in the bay, Piquels and I got grounded after we got a wallopin' to beat all wallopin's, and then Daddy took me to work with him so that he could keep his eye on me. He lets me chop all the carrots and onions and celery in the kitchen at the Inn. You know what, if the pirate thing doesn't work out, maybe I'll run away some day and be an Iron Chef.























Wilberforce and Piquels are a nod to The Katzenjammer Kids, created in 1897 by Rudolph Dirks, and remains the longest running syndicated comic still going after over 100 years!



Layout by Frieda Von Steuben with help from SubetaHQ, and of course the Forums.

Graphics by Frieda Von Steuben, but all images of the pets are property of Subeta and have only been manipulated in Photoshop CS3.

Thanks to Patrick F. McManus, author of the very funny story "Poof No Eyebrows" for the inspiration for the remark made about eyebrows going 'whoosh.'

Story by Frieda Von Steuben